


a collection of memories circulating around the 31st century

by bxzukhov (nbs4)



Category: Futurama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Class Differences, F/M, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Power Imbalance, Reincarnation, Revolutionary Rhetoric, basically a string of different AUs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 21:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15850104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbs4/pseuds/bxzukhov
Summary: "we've done this all before, we were angels once, don't you remember?" were words spoken by a much gentler, sheltered girl more than a thousand years ago, and yet, defying all explanation, leela could remember it all. in fragments, that is.





	1. a silent admission

**Author's Note:**

> so as i posted my weird claude frollo fic the other day, straight from a google doc i thought i had reserved just for writing "practice," i realized that i had a decent backlog of writing that was at the very least interesting, and perhaps worth shoving out into the world? 
> 
> for the most part, assume the narrator is leela, and all mentions of "he" are fry. i would've made this clearer, but i had a lot more shame when i wrote the first fragments than when i wrote the later ones (where leela and fry are named, because i no longer felt bad about writing futurama fic). sorry in advance to anyone who tries to dissect these. as always, please tell me if something in this fic is truly problematic (i'm still all the anarchist i was when i wrote my mostly-embarrassing hamilton fics, so lay it on me, comrades!), and also let me know if you have any questions; i have more extended lore for most sections of this in my head

soft, soft skin. that was the first thing i noticed at that climax i had been so  _ good _ in order to achieve. i ran my calloused hands down his perfectly preserved chest and realized i was touching the body of a man who had never worked for a single day of his life. he was as gentle and tender as the day he entered the world.  _ preserved, _ that was the right word for it.    
i stole another precious moment just to compare his hands to mine. i hadn’t done fieldwork for years by that point, and yet there seemed to be a permanent shadow of dirt under my fingernails. his hands were immaculate in a way i had never truly noticed even after knowing him for my entire life.

with every moment that passed i was acutely aware that i was closer to being caught, but as soon as i laid down with this impossibly preserved person, i no longer knew fear.    
a person with the unfathomable power of keeping his body intact could pardon my death penalty with a wave of his immaculate hand. even if he sleeps through my arrest, he would surely come to eventually and then use his position to protect me.   
as i absent-mindedly ran my rough fingers towards his penis, i had a familiar moment of deja-vu. i know for a fact that i’ve known him across space and time, and that every time i’ve known him it’s been under entirely different circumstances. same names. same faces. always some little catch.    
but he wasn’t always a king, i can assure myself of that much. and i wasn’t always a common slave gradually promoted to the status of “personal bodyguard” in order to make a rendezvous such as this much easier. maybe somewhere along the way,  _ i  _ was queen, and  _ he  _ had to swallow his pride and humanity to kneel at my feet before  _ my _ court.   
i get the sense that no matter how unremarkable either of us may seem from historical moment to historical moment, we must both be really special to the universe, if we keep meeting like this in the most absurd situations. and maybe i would know what exactly the universe wanted with us if i could just remember anything that happened before this moment, but i can’t. i am forced back in front of reality and asked to deal with my crimes.

i almost shouted the words in his face. “i am a revolutionary. i orchestrated the death of your entire noble family. i am the reason you wear the crown you do today. i carry poison on my person at all times, in order to satisfy the desires of my comrades. i tell them i’m working on finding a way to poison and kill you, in order to fulfill the plans we’ve killed and died and fought for since before any of our grandparents were born. but i can’t do it. i think i’ve loved you for longer than i can imagine. and also, i’m pregnant.”   
but instead, i spelled out every single word right above his belly button. if he awoke during this process, he didn’t make a sound or movement. 


	2. the idiot, maybe not unlike myshkin

both she and the horse could feel the weight after a few minutes.  
she reached up to touch his forehead every couple seconds just to make sure he hadn’t died yet. he was of no value to any of her comrades if he wasn’t alive, and awake, and able to use his power.  
(of course, he couldn’t be too cognizant. he would have to remain his usual flighty self in order to be easily manipulated. this was vital, for if they couldn’t make him their puppet, there was no reason for this entire endeavor. the whole reason she had been sent out to the castle was to manipulate him into agreeing to do this, but if he backed out after all of this, they were back to square one, maybe even a negative square, because they would have to deal with the repercussions of stealing--)  
still warm, she thought. too goddamn warm.  
(in her defense, she had no idea the prince had literally never left royal grounds. it made sense in hindsight, but even then, she had no way of predicting that the most gifted royal descendant in generations had spent his entire life in one wing of the castle because a rigged IQ test proclaimed him an idiot. maybe rigged wasn’t the right word, but isn’t everything genuinely rigged in this world? if she had learned anything in the past month, it was that even at the top of the food chain, there’s enough competition to make it so that only a few can be truly powerful, and the rest are simply figureheads or useless millionaires allowed to keep their riches but not to do anything with them. the other prince had been killed in an explosion that may or may not have been of her doing, but the world was left with this one: the idiot.)


	3. calypso

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listened to suzanne vega's "calypso" while writing this (back in april, mind you)

i had never seen another person.    
   i honestly didn’t know what to expect. he didn’t look like me, but he looked more like me than anything on the island. for a brief moment i asked myself if this was the god or devil that the books that washed ashore had mentioned so many times, but after realizing that his skin smelled of the same salt that mine had permanently assumed, i knew he had to be of my kind.

                 because of that, i can’t say for certain if it was love or not. perhaps that made it easier to say goodbye to him. if you don’t have anything to compare, you can’t make educated judgements. but i couldn’t keep him forever, for he had clearly come from some place, and while i may have too, i also may have just appeared on this island one day, and even if i hadn’t, this is the only home i could ever comprehend, so i’ll stay here for the rest of my life. when i told him that, he had a sad look in his eye. wherever he comes from, the people there think it is sad to spend their days alone and unmoving.   
 i’ll never understand that way of thinking.   



	4. jukai

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listened to jhene aiko's "jukai" while writing this

the city became stifling. i could never understand how someone could spend their entire life in it. i always told myself i would never fit in anywhere else, but i looked in the mirror and told myself i was doomed to feel that way no matter wherever i went, so i looked for somewhere else.   
it isn’t because i don’t love you, just so you know. you’re the only one i ever loved. but you’re also the only one i ever hated with a personal passion, for even a moment, and it was only a moment, but i’ll never forget the pain in my chest. it’s only my fault, but it’s why i have to leave. passionate love becomes passionate hate. i don’t want to hate you just for loving me. i’m not ready to commit. i’ll never be ready to commit. if i disappear, you’ll forget me, and i can’t hurt you. more importantly, i can’t feel that burning in my chest anymore, the fire that made me want to claw my chest open and take it out myself--   



	5. primal scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before we wade into this more substantial fragment from july, a simple sentence written in april still:  
> "i have fallen in love with all of their simple little ways."
> 
> yeah, this switches from first-person to second-person perspective. no, it wasn't really on purpose, but now i don't want to change it.
> 
> also, if anyone can figure out what i was referring to in so many words with the lake and whatnot...i'll be pleasantly surprised.

i have spent the last 4 years in striving, yearning agony.

4 years since they ripped my own flesh and blood away from me, and i emitted the most primal scream, like they used to do on the shores of some vast lake 

that has maybe since dried up, before their big tests, before the pounding hearts against their ribs, and so on. 

they called it a primal scream, but there was something a hundred times more manufactured about that scream than the one i let out in that moment, alone, inside, in fiercest agony, with not even the strength to care if my heart beat out of my chest.

i spent those 4 years numb and yet in constant pain.    
“and to know that all that time, you didn’t give a thought to me...well, i’ll be honest, fry, it hurts.”

he didn’t look at me. he still, wouldn’t, look at me. even after all of the petting, and prodding, and mutual holding of our little baby girl, he, in his own, primal way, refused to see that  _ i _ didn’t hurt him.   
however, he did respond. “i’m sorry, leela.”

i wanted to say, “you used to say that so genuinely,” but i knew that speaking in past tense wouldn’t help either of us. the whole situation was a cruelly ironic reversal of the first thirteen years we had known each other; now i was the one with the past and he the one with only the future.

is this how it feels to leave behind a father, and a mother, and a brother, and a dog? with nothing but a millenium keeping you apart?    
it had only been five years, but it must have felt similar. time being a thin film, seeming so easy to burst through, being able to picture the past so clearly in your mind. i can see the tears in his eyes as i wake up in a hospital bed, but i can’t punch through that film, it stretches back, it bounces back, and my fist hurts.

instead, i said, “i know you are. i’m sorry you have to feel sorry. but i’m also sorry for myself.”

i swallow. “i used to think that was a bad thing. until i really had something to feel sorry about. it’s all that’s left after the years of constant, blinding rage.”

“angry...for my sake?”   
“not yours alone. keep in mind, i didn’t know you had been tortured until just the other day. honestly,” i say with a chuckle, “i thought until now that you had been just...let free.”   
“well, i was.” he almost looks at me. “after i was tortured.”

he says that word so cavalierly. five years ago, he would have whined it, at least a little. just when you had thought a boy had finally became a man, and you wanted him to stay like that, he found a way to grow up even further.

while fry grew up and became a traumatized office worker against his will, he also became the breadwinner for a surprisingly loyal robot and their human-passing daughter.   
she’s your daughter. he apparently learned how to dye hair, and now does it to the little girl every month or so to make sure nobody at school thinks any part of her is inhuman. he’s mostly afraid of the teachers.    
neither he nor the girl have any memory of you. your blood, just human enough to keep you on the surface for nearly four decades but not enough to keep you from being bought and sold, even though every, every last drop of you was human, and every drop of her was human too, and if anything, the largest abnormality of her genetics was the half that had been stagnant for a millennium, it made you feel like a cancer interrupting thanksgiving dinner.   
here, finally, your precious baby girl was given a face to accompany all her troubles, and a mother she didn’t need with her two loving daddies.

all bender had said was that she was yours. he claimed that he tried, in the beginning, to jog his memory, to pull any thread that might lead fry to remembering you, but his programming isn’t defective. eventually, he just gave up. and took advantage of a fundamentally crappy situation by marrying the love of his life, even if it was in secret.

you literally can’t blame him, you’ve married fry multiple times and would do it again in a heartbeat. that doesn’t make it hurt any less.   
  



End file.
